Left Behind In Cuba

My family is from Cuba. On my dad's side there are 14 brothers and sisters, all raised on a farm. On my mom's side, there are 5 siblings, all raised apart by relatives since my maternal grandmother passed away when my mother was just 18 months old.

Most of the family emigrated to the United States via Miami and New York. Except my "grandparents" - the relatives who raised my mother.

I was the first born in my family of 3 children. Since I was the first, my mother wanted to take me to Cuba to visit them, since they raised my mother and my mother considered these folks to be her actual mother and father, considering she had no memory of her biological mother.

We arrived for our visit, not without warnings from my father, who told my mother not to stay too long since he heard from a friend that the political climate of Cuba was rumbling with rumors of a revolution and he didn't want us to be caught in the middle of that.

During our visit with our relatives, my grandmother asked my mother to leave me there with her for a couple of weeks, so she could show me off to the other relatives. My mother, having forgotten what my dad had told her, agreed and left me there with my grandparents.

When she got off the plane in Miami, my father, alarmed that she had arrived without me, (and told me many years later that he was so angry with her, that he considered divorcing her over this), panicked. He tried to make her understand that the revolution in Cuba was imminent and that I might not be able to leave. And that is precisely what happened. The revolution happened that week, all diplomats were told to leave the country and the borders were closed to all travel, in and out of Cuba.

My father had a friend in the Cuban Embassy in Miami, who told him it was going to take time to get me out, since the new Cuban government was not opening any dialogues with the US government. For the next 11 months, the Embassy would try to see if there was anything they could do to get an infant, a US Citizen infant, back to America.

In the meantime, I was living at my family's ancestral home, completely unaware of the circumstances. After all, I was being fed, clothed and loved. What more could a baby need?

A few weeks later, some soldiers came to our door. They informed my grandfather that our home now belonged to the people, to the administration of Fidel Castro and that we had 30 days to leave. My grandfather owned a bakery in the center of the capital city of Havana. That store had a small apartment upstairs. So, 30 days later, we moved from our large home with beautiful marble floors and lovely gardens, to a small apartment in the middle of an urban city.

I celebrated my first birthday in that apartment. I was ill with pneumonia, but my grandmother, always one to keep up appearances, dressed me up in my finest lace gown with fresh curls and ribbons in my hair, all ready for the professional photographer they hired to snap photos of my milestone day.

My father, in the meanwhile was finally to get an answer about getting me home. During that year, the Castro regime was not allowing professionals to leave the country at all. Doctors, Lawyers, Accountants, anyone of that caliber were unable to get exit visas at all. His contact at the Embassy told him that they were able to get a limited number of exit visas, and that he could get me one BUT only if my father could ask someone in the family who lived there to take me with them.

He was able to contact my cousin, Zenaida, who was a psychiatrist, and who had been trying to leave the country for over a year with no luck. When my father told her he could get her an exit visa, but only if she took me with her, she immediately agreed! We left Cuba for Miami the following week and I was back home in the arms of my parents.

To this day, whenever I see my cousin Zenaida at any of the family functions, she never ceases to remind me that if it wasn't for her, I would probably have been serving in the Cuban Army. Jokingly, of course. Or was she joking?

I am caring for my mom now, since she has Alzheimer's and is living in memory care. But when we visit with her, I always try to get her to tell me stories of her youth and growing up in Cuba. And we laugh about the time she left me in Cuba. I joke with her that she abandoned me there, but occasionally I wonder if the separation may have harmed my bond with her.

It hasn't. :-)